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Topic: Women To Serve In Combat Roles (Read 2802 times)

This sounds perfectly reasonable to me, provided women who wish to be in combat roles must meet the exact same physical and mental requirements as men.

Otherwise, it is just as angryguy77 says, "pc-driven".

Also, and this is more of a bigger picture issue, but nothing irritates me more than women who demand equal rights, but don't want to accept similar standards for performance, expectations, etc., but instead demand special considerations not given to men. Equal should be equal.

If women can get the job done, of course they should be allowed to serve in combat.

I agree with AG's sentiment, though: it's ridiculous to lower standards in the name of affirmative action. If that's being done -- and I haven't read anything to know whether it is or isn't -- then it's a misguided policy, in my mind.

Happy to see our military used to further the PC agenda. How can you have an effective fighting force where there is one set of physical requirements for men and one for women?

I thought the president would want to finish off this economy before going after the military. Guess he's a good multitasker

Didn't know there was actually a PC agenda. Wonder why you got it and I didn't since I'd probably be on board.

Do you think it's a bad idea to have women in combat roles? I think prohibiting it is a bad idea.

As a man who could meet the physical requirements for serving in the military, but one who would also be less physically able than some women, I really don't see your point.

Women don't have to meet the same physical requirements as men do. This is nothing more than a pc driven idea. Adding women to combat roles doesn't make our forces more effective. The military is not there for a social experiment, it's there to defend us, kill people and break things.

Not sure that's true as it pertains to combat missions that would be appropriate to the individual's capabilities -- not necessarily every combat mission or every woman. How do you differntiate between a politically driven idea and just a good idea? My opinions are not politically driven (you'll just have to take my word for that) but I think it's a good idea. Your calling it 'pc' driven marginalizes my opinion. It would be like me saying to you that the only reason you disagree with it is because Obama likes it. I would avoid risking an offense to your intelligence with such an assertion.

I'd like to add that Israel found this to be a total disaster. They found that men were more focused on protecting their fellow female soldiers than they were on the enemy. Moral also took a dive when these men saw maimed women on the battlefield.

You can't change human nature, I just hope we don't find out the hard way.

If women can get the job done, of course they should be allowed to serve in combat.

I agree with AG's sentiment, though: it's ridiculous to lower standards in the name of affirmative action. If that's being done -- and I haven't read anything to know whether it is or isn't -- then it's a misguided policy, in my mind.

On one side, I think it's pretty reasonable to think that there are roles in combat duty that women are fully capable of performing. And since the biggest problem I have with the military is the increasing rate of hiring subcontractors (mercenaries) for combat duties, Id feel a lot more comfortable with replacing some of those subcontractor jobs with active duty soldiers, regardless of sex.

On the other side, if, even in the short term, women in combat roles tend to put people in disproportionatly dangerous situations, and I mean this as a trend, not in an ancedotal sense, it's a bad idea.

I think what you'll see is a slow integration with specifically chosen candidates whose abilities are virtually beyond reproach.

Granted, I am now speaking from very limited experience, but I'd bet most people would be shocked at how little the bench press matters in combat compared to tactics/orders/discipline/thinking/etc, and I'd be willing to bet that all those areas are likely to be increased now that women are allowed (simply because the relative female candidate is likely superior to the relative male candidate given the unspoken screening process that occurs in trying to join).

Frankly, many of the drawbacks of war have to do with Macho-ism gone wrong; a shakeup may be in order.

If women can get the job done, of course they should be allowed to serve in combat.

I agree with AG's sentiment, though: it's ridiculous to lower standards in the name of affirmative action. If that's being done -- and I haven't read anything to know whether it is or isn't -- then it's a misguided policy, in my mind.

Also, being a stats-person, I'd like to see a large statistical analysis of what attributes (weight lifting, shooting accuracy, hiking endurance, critical thinking, order following, whatever) actually correlate with war outcomes (decreased own troop losses, improved acheivement of war objectives, decreased civilian casualties, decreased civilian rapes, etc).

Wanna know something funny? That was one of my favorite movies as a teenager, but when I was around 22 or something (maybe earlier?) I actually read the book. The books ideas about democracy had a huge impact of how I gauge was a 'citizen' is, and the sci-fi stuff is just kind of background noise for the social message the author tries to give us. Made wish I would've read it earlier.

All I can tthink of when I read this is Chris Rock's line " If they wanna fight, let'em fight. Cuz I ain't fightin'. i don't care if I see a Russian tank rollin down flatbush avenue. Call me a coward, I'll be a coward walkin around with two legs."

Hence, the gray area between the semantics of "support" roles and "active" combat roles ... it's a pretty thin line, especially from their point of view, where they've been fighting, firing their weapons, getting shot, and risking their lives for quite some time.